Car jacks suck. Most resemble a sort of medieval torture device, and you have to be some combination of Alan Turing and Charles Atlas to figure out how the things work and then to actually work them.

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So Remi van Oers, a student at the Design Academy Eindhoven, came up with a clever solution: a self-inflating jack that looks like less of a car tool than a new Apple device.

Easy-Car-Jack has a tiny hole at its back that sucks air into an accordion-like balloon. The balloon — which is made of ultra-thick, PVC-coated woven polyester — then inflates almost immediately, propping up vehicles as heavy as 1.3 tons (about the size of an average European car or a small American car). All you’ve got to do is press a button.

[Change a tire and wear 4-inch heels… AT THE SAME TIME!]

A bonus: The jack’s lid doubles as an emergency triangle and safety light. Just pop it off and set it down on the shoulder a few feet away. That way, you don’t have to worry about getting creamed by passing cars.

Seems the designer thought of everything, eh? Well, not everything. Easy-Car-Jack won’t put the spare on for you.

Van Oers unveiled Easy-Car-Jack at the Design Academy’s graduation show last month. See more of his work here (Web site is in Dutch).